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Comment by aaron-lebo | Hacker News Reader

> Curiously, authors that receive no feedback, are more likely to leave the community entirely.

Ding ding ding.

I think, aside from the issues with downvoting, upvoting by nature slowly creates hivemind, circle jerk communities that quickly start to lack any real critical thinking.

Go check out just about any subreddit and it becomes very apparent what illogical silly ideas dominate. If you are logical but uncontroversial you'll get ignored which is just as bad as the controversial opinions which get downvoted to hell. You start to wonder if the confirmation bias we are all building towards is more dangerous than just being uninformed.

There's lots of research on voting behavior in political science, I'm slightly surprised more hasn't been down with it.

View on HN

Why go to a different site? You can see the "hivemind, circle jerk communities" phenomenon right here. I'm not trying to be cynical but HN certainly displays the same criticism you levy on reddit (as does apparently any community that allows voting).

Absolutely. But if I had said that I wouldn't be getting sweet Internet points right now.

I joke. Reddit is the best example, I think because of how subreddits usually follow a very specific cycle of creation to focus on a specific topic, then the upvoting dynamic creates a strong hivemind, then the dissenters leave and create their own even more narrowly focused community (see /r/politics to /r/conservative), and then it starts over.

It's destructive. HN is a little better because there are actually some limits on democracy if you will (thresholds, flagging, etc), which goes back to the heart of my mention of political science. Different political philosophers have been discussing the dangers of overly simple voting scheme since Plato or earlier.

> But if I had said that I wouldn't be getting sweet Internet points right now.

Yes, you would. Criticizing and complaining about HN is popular on HN.

I think you nailed it though, it's the "points" thing. You're creating an incentive for people to desperately say witty things to get more points, but when people forcefully try to be witty or helpful they end up being formulaic in the worst way ... they find patterns that people almost always approve of and use that.

I wonder what would happen if you actually hide all the numbers ... all karma/etc is still there, just not visible to the user.

>I wonder what would happen if you actually hide all the numbers ... all karma/etc is still there, just not visible to the user.

That's a pretty interesting idea. I like it. I don't know of any community that has tried this.

What if you were only allotted a certain (small) number of upvotes and downvotes per day or HN submission? I wonder what effect that would have.

I think for one thing it would cut down on the phenonenom I've noticed here where slightly controversial comments are immediately downvoted, but which then are upvoted back to full visibility. There seems to be a dedicated core of HNers who zealously and frequently downvote any comment that's not directly related to hard-core technology issues (there may be other motives, I've not examined the patterns carefully). These quick dowvotes are often enough to cause some feelings of ill-will that persist through the rest of the exchange.

I think limiting the number of available downvotes would drastically reduce these quick downvotes, which would be a good thing.

How about downvotes costing you karma? Warm fuzzy upvotes wherever you like (limited only by how long you want to spend doing so), but harming someone else via downvote only available if you're committed enough to lose a karma point of your own. The "pile on the crappy post" is easy when it's free, but sometimes downvoting is personally important enough to do even if it costs something.

The problem with these internet points is that they combine funny, constructive into a single meaningless number (game reviews also do this)

Edit: I'm new here and I still don't see the points.

what it comes down to is people here don't present easily dismissible notions for my above average intelligence to ignore; those on reddit do.

Not having a downvote is valuable. Limiting max score is valuable.

but people still abuse overrated/troll/flamebait on Slashdot.

the core of the problem is that truly intelligent people have moved on to greater aspirations than internet posting. Also, the dumb people on forums these days are a lot dumber than they were 15 years ago when I was getting started. And no, that's not just my perception in hindsight. The noise has gotten bad enough that I just don't participate in them. People don't see clearly like they used to, so it's not worth pointing.

> Also, the dumb people on forums these days are a lot dumber than they were 15 years ago when I was getting started

Probably correlated with more internet connectivity than 15 years ago.

but AOL?

Can you point out some "hive mind" ideologies here on HN?

I think we actually strike a pretty good balance. There are clearly large contingents of Apple, Google, and Microsoft fans/employees, all of whom tend to balance each other out. Then there is a large group of younger civil libertarians/libertarians as well as a large group of liberals. And then there is a large group of older, traditional "MIT-style" hackers.

I guess that there is some technophile group think that goes on, and it's true that among the SV contingent, there's a certain amount of ignorance about the state of the country outside of Silicon Valley. But all in all, I think there are enough counterbalancing ideologies and interests here on HN that the hive mind tends not to occur to the same extent as on subreddits, which are by definition single-interest groups.

This is the funniest thing I've read in WEEKS. Thank you.

I'm not sure why you say that. I see that a few comments you made about the paleo diet were probably unfairly downvoted. But some of your more controversial comments, like on H1Bs, were rigorously debated, with lots of people on either side.

Why would you make a comment like that seeking to make fun of what I wrote? It definitely doesn't further the conversation. Are you hoping to shut it down?

And if you disagree so strongly, tell me why. I'd like to know.

Edit: Seriously, what are you laughing at? My criticism of Silicon Valley or my defense of HN's relative balance?

> Can you point out some "hive mind" ideologies here on HN?

Sure. See any comments relating to "idea guy" vs "hacker" or "founder" vs "employee."

The hivemind attitude that I see on HN could be summarized by "People who can write code should be given preferential treatment."

Which makes sense, given by and large, people who participate here have some sort of coding capabilities, so that mentality is clearly self serving. But hardly makes this balanced, and not hive-minded.

I think this[0] thread is a pretty good example of a hive mind in action. I disagree with a lot of those comments but I would have had to put a lot more effort to write a dissenting comment than most other commenters just to have a chance of not being downvoted into oblivion. But I can easily imagine lots of one sentence comments I could have made that would have been at worst ignored.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8838721

Frankly, people concerned about surveillance and civil liberties is a hive mind I'm proud to be a part of. We're definitely a very small minority in our respective countries, so no argument can be made that we're part of some oppressive majority.

So yeah, guilty there.

Wow, downvoted away. The irony abounds.

Your description of balance illustrates the problem.

Lets say you have two groups of people, one of which thinks you should put sugar in bread, and the other which thinks putting sugar in bread is blasphemous. On the issue of sugar in bread, you will get a rigorous debate for the affirmative and negative.

However, if someone posts something to the effect of "Humans shouldn't be eating bread", both of those groups of people will vote that comment down, regardless of the argument presented.

Apple, Google and Microsoft fans all agree that computers and software are 'good things', it is the implementation details where they disagree, so any dissenting opinion to common ground that those groups share will be prejudicially downvoted into oblivion.

It is this common ground where group think is created and reinforced.

That's a pretty fair criticism, and I have to agree with everything that you write here. But I don't see any way around that. I can't imagine a general interest site could possibly function like HN.

About 18 months ago I stopped posting regularly on HN after my former account was downvoted into a type of purgatory that was impossible to escape from. I still read the interesting articles and the occasional interesting discussion, but something I discovered in the intervening period of participating in unmoderated/uncensored forums is that trolls make you THINK. There are some exceptional trolls out there on the interwebs, some of whom do it as a day job. They post articulate but specious arguments that are very difficult to debunk unless you do meticulous research, double check your calculations, edit your reply for succinctness, remove any possible semantic ambiguity. I think there is an argument to be made for the stimulating effect of trolls on the rigour and effort of the opposing participants. I agree however that trolls can and have destroyed valuable forums of discussion, but so has lack of interest.

>something I discovered in the intervening period of participating in unmoderated/uncensored forums is that trolls make you THINK

Some trolls make you think. Some trolls only hope to destroy online communities, and they are usually very good at it. It can be very hard sometimes to differentiate between the two.

Also, it's entirely possible to make people think without trolling (and I know you weren't claiming this). For example, your response to my remark made me think without being trollish. I personally prefer to participate in communities that promote your type of provocative comment, and not in ones where trolls are given free reign. But that's just me.

I agree with what you say. There is a fine line, however, between censuring trolls and suppressing dissent. I think anonymous downvoting and no right of reply, risks the latter to gain the former.

Exactly. I spent a couple weeks building up my little HN points once. Then I made a comment like "That was a very interesting article!" and was downvoted to hell. I asked why, and that was downvoted to hell. Negative karma after working on positive for two weeks.

So fsck you very much you guys. Every last one of you with your little down vote button. Now when I feel the urge to post here, I create a single use throwaway account, say whatever I feel like, and then log out.

HN is very much a hivemind. It's easy to see when you're not worried about your negative internet points.

I'm sorry you were downvoted with no explanation, I'm sure that sucked after gaining positive karma.

As you may know, what you ran into there were two foundational ideas in HN culture, which are:

1. Don't post "trivial" comments that are common on Reddit, like "+1", "thanks for that!", "interesting article!". HN tries to maintain a very high signal to "noise" ratio by discouraging these kinds of comments, and I actually appreciate it, since reading through lots of those types of comments makes it difficult to focus on comments meant to foster further discussion, or to inform.

2. It's an official guideline not to complain about being downvoted. Your comment asking why you were downvoted may have been interpreted as complaining about being downvoted. If you were just asking why, I'm sorry you were downvoted and that no one bothered to explain.

Every online community has its quirks, and you just happened to run into two of them with your comments in that post. Personally, I've never worried too much about accumulating points on HN. I just try to post informative comments, or comments meant to provoke discussion, and things have gone well.

Again, sorry you were downvoted for asking a simple question. I'd not do that.

> Negative karma after working on positive for two weeks...I create a single use throwaway account, say whatever I feel like, and then log out.

> HN is very much a hivemind. It's easy to see when you're not worried about your negative internet points.

The problem isn't HN and the hivemind. The problem here is you. You still care about the points (or rather the consequences of them) because you take the trouble to create a throwaway account, so that when your post is upvoted, or downvoted, you don't feel tied to it.

If you truly didn't care you would either:

1) stop posting on here altogether 2) not care about what others thought of your comments, and stop using throwaway accounts.

> Can you point out some "hive mind" ideologies here on HN?

I have a problem with HN voting conceptually, compared to Slashdot - on Slashdot, you were supposed not to downvote a comment that you disagree with. The purpose of upvotes and downvotes was to facilitate discussion. On HN, the policy seems to be - if you agree/disagree, upvote/downvote (although I am not sure it's official, that's what I have been told, I may have been trolled :-)).

I too prefer your the Slashdot approach, and there's quite a few of us on HN who vote in that way. However, since there's no official policy on that, it can go either way (even though PGs writings seem to strongly support your approach).

> I think, aside from the issues with downvoting, upvoting by nature slowly creates hivemind, circle jerk communities that quickly start to lack any real critical thinking.

I don't think voting has anything to do with it. I think that people's natural tendency to (1) imitate others that they respond to positively, and (2) seek out communities where there are people they respond to positively and where people respond to them positively, and avoid other communities, tends to lead to communities of likethinkers, especially when the cost to leave or join communities is low the way it is online.

This is certainly true, but it is exacerbated by how these systems are designed. Flat text forums, which have problems of their own, don't specifically discourage you (your post sinks to the bottom) if you have an opinion which doesn't fit the community's "correct" mindset.

It doesn't happen mechanically, but I think you get about equivalent social behavior - for example Metafilters orders posts by time rather than popularity but there's a great deal of social policing that goes on there and piles upon opinions that are at variance with community norms.

Yep, definitely noticed that on reddit and here. I'd say having votes is positive overall for bigger communities but when everyone's optimizing for votes, it subtly changes the nature of the comments. That's not neccessarily negative but it sometimes seems to have a similar effect as when people are in front of a camera.

I visit one community website about linux (non-english) that doesn't have voting and I really like the natural, down-to-earth discussions and arguments (usually about current issues, politics, etc.).

There was a research paper about how being ignored is worse than an argument. Can't remember the details at the moment.

This is showing exactly that, from 2006:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2006....

Lol, so this is why I say ridiculous hyperbole - the attention.

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